Video on demand systems provide video titles to users based on user determined start times. Typically, a content provider streams video content to each user individually. A true video on demand (VOD) system assumes each customer can start a new video stream immediately upon request. This implies that every VOD request made at a different starting time needs a new unicast transport stream for the video content. Unfortunately, this results in a high network transport cost in terms of network bandwidth compared to a broadcast system. However, a study shows that with about 6 start times for a video stream bandwidth, a static broadcasting schedule for a VOD system can support a large number of customers with 20 seconds initial delay for a two hour movie. See, e.g., Ramaprabhu Janakiraman et al., “Fuzzycast: Efficient Video-on-Demand over Multicast”, proceeding of InfoCom 2002, New York.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and method, which better utilizes resources to provide a true video on demand system.